Welcome to the Norfolk Island Museum's blog. We are lucky to be located in the most beautiful part of a stunning island in the South Pacific. We are a little island, but our history and stories are great - from Polynesian and convict settlements to the home of the Bounty mutineers. Hopefully you'll enjoy our stories.

Sunday, July 31, 2011

In the midst of the downturn in tourism on Norfolk Island over the last few years, the Museum has been quietly going against the trend of dropping sales. Despite lower visitor numbers to the island we have seen an increase in sales of our Museum Pass and bookings for the Cemetery Tour “For Whom the Bell Tolls”. We think that one of the reasons for this has been that we are offering visitors what they want – a flexible experience that is ‘do it when you want’ and of high quality. Of course as more visitors come to the island to experience our heritage and culture through World Heritage Listed KAVHA, we are well placed to provide the content they are after.

Over the last few years Baunti Escapes has been enthusiastically selling all our tickets and tours and we have also jointly brought our ‘products’ together. For example we have put together a Traditional Dinner and Play Combination where visitors see The Trial of the Fifteen play and then go on to a traditional island dinner at the REO Café provided by Baunti. Late last year Baunti provided a wonderful opportunity for us to have an up-town presence by providing valuable and extensive space in their offices to display information about the museums, our tours and tickets. This has been fantastic for us – we had long desired a place in town to be able to sell our tickets as there is nothing worse that meeting a visitor at one of our museums on the day before they leave who tells us “we just didn’t know you were down here”. Now we have a much greater chance to catch them early in their stay to tell them all about what we have on offer down town.

And Baunti has now made our up-town presence even greater with a great big sign displaying our Museum logo placed on their awning. We couldn’t hope for a better opportunity to catch the eye of visitors as they wander through town. Have a look next time you drive past – I’m sure you’ll agree that it offers a great chance for us to attract even more visitors down the hill to Kingston to see the museums.